Puketiti Station

The story of Puketiti Station, the 180-year-old Williams family legacy and how an airline pilot and his wife from Auckland inherited a new life farming on the East Cape. Puketiti Station, the Category 1 historic homestead, cobbled stables, and covenanted gardens at its heart lie hidden above the sands and breakers of the east coast, 100 kilometres north of Gisborne, on the road to Ruatoria. Puketiti was once the headquarters of the enormous 40,000-acre Waipiro block, first purchased by missionary William Williams' son James in 1883. Passed down through successive generations of the Williams blood line, Puketiti found itself in unsuspecting hands when the eccentric Des Williams' died a bachelor in 1997. Attending his tangi were 22 godchildren. One of them, 27-year-old Dan Russell, hitchhiked to Puketiti from Auckland with nothing more in mind than to pay his respects. But on his arrival Dan was greeted with the news that would change his life forever. He had inherited the entire station - the homestead, its historic outbuildings, 3000-hectares of productive hill country and nearly 20,000 stock units, all debt free. Dan had visited the farm only a handful of times in his lifetime, and with a career as an airline pilot planned out before him, Dan and his city-girl wife from Auckland, Anna, were in disbelief. Des Williams' only wish was that Dan keep Puketiti as a working sheep and cattle station. He feared others might succumb to the prolific offshore corporate investment in forestry threatening the historic stations on the east coast. Over 15 years on, Dan and Anna are still coming to terms with their new lives on this most remote and romantic of New Zealand's historic stations, a traditional way of life in the backblocks of beyond, true to the Williams legacy, but it hasn't come easy.Author BiographyBee Dawson is a social historian who enjoys researching and writing books on the history of people, places and gardens. The wide range of topics she has written about includes women painters, the air force, the New Zealand garden, freight transportation, Hobsonville air base, the Child Cancer Foundation, and Puketiti Station. Born in Belfast, Ireland, she came with her family to a sheep farm in Staveley, Canterbury, when she was three years old. Bee graduated from the University of Canterbury with a Master's Degree (First Class Honours) in industrial psychology. After working for the State Services Commission, she joined the Royal New Zealand Air Force as an occupational psychologist. She has written for New Zealand Gardener and now writes for New Zealand House and Garden. She lives with her family and one small white dog on top of a windswept cliff overlooking Wellington Harbour. See more at www.beedawson.co.nz. Book titles include: Mighty Moves: Heavy haulage and house moving in New Zealand; A History of Gardening in New Zealand; Hobsonville: Portrait of a seaplane station; No Journey Made Alone: 35 years of the Child Cancer Foundation; Puketiti Station: The story of an East Coast sheep station and the 180-year-old Williams family legacy; Wigram - the birthplace of military aviation in New Zealand; The New Zealand Woman - 80 glorious years of fashion, food and friendship from the pages of the New Zealand Woman's Weekly; Lady Painters- the flower painters of early New Zealand; Lady Travellers - the tourists of early New Zealand; Dedicated to Diabetes: Diabetes New Zealand 1962-2002. Diabetes New Zealand, 2002; High Flyers: Celebrating the extraordinary women of the RNZAF 1977-2002; and Spreading their Wings: New Zealand WAAFs in wartime. Becky Nunes is an award-winning photographer and the Head of Department for Photography at Whitecliffe College of Arts and Design, Auckland. She was born in England and came to New Zealand after graduating with a Bachelor's degree in film and literature from Warwick University. Becky is also part of contemporary photography collective Tangent (www.tangentnz.tumblr.com). A commercial and editorial photographer for many years, Nunes has worked with numerous large publishers, designers and advertising agencies, and her architectural and lifestyle imagery has won awards and been published both nationally and internationally. In 2007 Nunes contributed over 50 contemporary portraits to Ngahuia Te Awekotuku's award-winning book Mau Moko - the world of Maori tattoo, and this body of work has subsequently been shown at the Calder Lawson gallery in the Waikato and at the Gus Fisher gallery in Auckland. Her other work has also been the subject of a number of gallery exhibitions, and she was a finalist in the 2012 Wallace Art Awards. She is currently engaged in a project dealing with ideas around tapu, taonga and the environmental landscape of the Central North Island. A past Vice President of AIPA, Becky has also been a judge of a number of wards, including the National Epson Print Awards and the Cathay Pacific Travel Awards.Her awards include:AIPP/NZIPP National Print Awards (2 Gold, 9 Silver and 3 Category winners); the Cathay Pacific Travel Awards (2003 winner Best NZ Image; 2006 finalist Best International Image); NZIPP Epson Print Awards (2009 Commercial Photographer of the Year; 2010 Landscape Photographer of the Year). See more at www.beckynunes.co.nz.